Let's go through a simple demonstration of how one goes about building and running a first-time adventure for a group of new players in D&D, going by the books. I'm going to assume you own the core books at least, and are somewhat familiar with their content. Since we are assuming a group of all-new players, we're going to go easy on them. We're also going to assume a moderate session length of 4 hours. A light game is 2 hours and a long game is 8. We're going to say the first hour is taken up by character creation, and the remaining three hours are adventure. We'll get in to how to execute on that plan in a little bit. Keep in mind that everything in this demonstration is just example and placeholder. I am literally pulling all of the fantasy story stuff out of my ass and making it up as I go. Plainly put, bullshitting is the DM's first task in making any kind of a scenario.
First, we need a setting. Let's just go with a generic fantasy kitchen sink that uses the info from the corebooks at face value. That's simple and easy to learn, because it doesn't require the beginners to sort out the difference between core and homebrew. I would not recommend running a pre-existing campaign setting like the Forgotten Realms or Eberron, unless you are already personally very comfortable with that setting. It is a LOT of work to become familiar with an established setting from nothing, and there's a chance a player at your table will be so much more knowledgeable about that setting than you that they will argue your whole adventure is, wrong. Just avoid the whole mess of making up, our own version, and do the simple thing: from scratch, start small, start vague.
I'm going to call this fantasy setting Dungeon World. To make it sound fancy, let's make that latin. Lacus Mundus. Let's make it a single word to seem more esoteric. Lacundus. OK, now where in that world are we going to be? Well, we already know it's a world of dungeons, so let's bring in the whole dragon thing and make it dragon land; a world ruled by a dragon. Dragon lord in latin is draco dominus. Turned into a single word, we get Dracominus. So, we are playing in the kingdom of Dracominus in the world of Lacundus. Actually, the repetitive "us" suffix reveals what we did to get those words. Let's drop that suffix. The kingdom of Dracomin in the world of Lacund. There. Properly fantasy-sounding, and good enough to justify whatever silly stuff we want our fantasy-folk to do.
Now we need an adventure for our heroes to take part in.
For the sake of getting on with things, let's just have the DM tell the players that they are wandering adventurers and that they have each gone to the royal castle to answer a public summons from the dragon lord to do some important royal service. Since the books say only metallic dragons are good, and we want the players to be impressed by the dragon, let's say the king is a gold dragon. Actually, let's make that a little more interesting, let's make it a queen gold dragon. I'll use a random name generator on the internet to call her... Shoth The Stubborn. Cool. That name generator even gave me some info on what this NPC is like!
When choosing names, avoid difficult to say things like "Glah'noilk", or "Khoowinyna". Instead, stick with clear open sounds, like "Rothen", "Valis", or "Tomad". It helps if you can attach an easily remembered epithet to their name, like, LORD OF RATS, or, True-Soul. This gives real words the players' memories can latch on to, that will help trigger memory of the proper name in the process.
Now, let's plan the combat encounters the dragon queen wants the players to deal with!
We're starting with the combat pillar because it is the most technical element of an adventure, and because combat is often the most dramatic element of a story. You don't have to start with the combat pillar. You could start with the roleplay or exploration pillars, and then work combat into it in later steps. It is up to you to build your workflow as you see fit. Personally though, I find combat important and complicated, and I have no problem just making up the other two aspects of play on the fly, so I tend to treat roleplay and exploration as, finishing touches. There's also only so much prep you can do for roleplay and exploration; most of it will have to be improvised at the table in response to whatever wackiness the players bring to you.
An average party of 4 level 1 characters has a total adventuring day XP of 1200. To figure that out, go to DMG page 84. You multiply the adventuring day XP by the expected number of players. I have no idea how many players you'll have, but the average party size is 4, so that's what I'm going with for this example.
Incidentally, 1200xp is also what they need to level up.
In our theoretical four hour session, you should be able to squeeze in enough action for them to gain a level and complete their first adventure. Now, divide that value by 3. That gets you 400xp per rest. A standard adventure has two short rests, and ends with a long rest. Think of the, adventuring day, as your story arc from literary theory. You break it into 3 acts; a beginning, middle, and conclusion, just like you would with a book. You control the escalation of the conflict by breaking up the XP budget in interesting ways and by roleplaying increasing stakes. The, adventuring day, is named such because it is a string of encounters with little time for rest in between, which puts a bit of a time constraint on the action. An adventuring day spread over multiple days of events would be very easy, because the players would have plenty of opportunity to take a long rest and effectively, reset, themselves mid-adventure. Now, to flesh out the three acts of your adventuring day, you simply buy encounters in the form of how much XP they are worth.
Let's pre-calculate our encounter threat thresholds for this standard party. You can find this information on DMG page 82.
Easy = 100xp
Medium = 200xp
Hard = 300xp
Deadly = 400xp
Your encounter threat thresholds are a way of calculating how dangerous a combat encounter is. Threat levels refer to how demanding on player resources, especially hit dice and spell slots, that encounter will be. The deadly threshold is unusual from the rest, because it represents an encounter which is theoretically likely to reduce at least one hero to 0 hit points at some point. Thanks to the death saves mechanic and the power of healing spells and the medicine check, it is very unlikely that a hero at 0 hit points will actually die, and so, deadly, is a bit of a misleading title. You choose a number of enemies, each representing an amount of xp, and add them together to create encounters of varying difficulty. Now, remember that these are MINIMUM thresholds. So, for example, if a combat doesn't even have the minimum to be an, easy, encounter, it's considered trivial or inconsequential. Meanwhile an encounter with the minimum threshold of, deadly, is only slightly more dangerous than the most difficult, hard, encounter. The number of enemies in an encounter multiplies their xp value as far as threat calculation goes, but does not affect how much xp that encounter is actually worth. When deducting encounters from your adventuring day budget, you deduct the actual xp the encounters are worth, not their adjusted threat rating. Likewise, when awarding xp for encounters, you award their actual xp, not the adjusted threat rating.
Now, the degree to which all this matters depends on what level your characters are. As the characters gain levels, they gain access to powers, equipment, and allies that will make them able to deal with challenges of an increasingly abstract nature. As a consequence, their measure of how effective they are in a toe-to-toe fight slowly becomes irrelevant as they gain levels. Another important thing to understand is that these guidelines make 2 assumptions: Firstly, they assume that the players have, NO, MAGIC, ITEMS, AT, ALL. Magic items make players more powerful in a variety of ways, allowing them to, punch above their weight, as it were. As such, if you give your players magic items, you will need to secretly adjust their effective level behind the scenes to match their real power output. Don't worry too much about that for now, by the time it becomes necessary, you'll have gotten enough of a feel for the game and your players that you'll know roughly what needs to be done. The second assumption is that the DM is using the monsters they chose to try and kill the players, no holds barred, no pulled punches. If you go easy on your players in any way, your encounter will, obviously, not be anywhere near as dangerous as it was calculated to be. Don't fear danger. D&D is a safe place to explore even the most frightening of scenarios. Characters might die from time to time, sure, but your players will still be alive, and as long as you played fair, they'll still be your friends. Don't be condescending to your players- it is up to you to believe in them, to root for them, to desire that they overcome your villainous plot! Let them face real challenges so that they can reap real rewards. Don't fudge the rolls behind the screen just to hand them a hollow victory.
For this particular adventure, because it's an introductory game for total newbies, we're going to try to go easy on them in the design process. That way, we can still throw our all at the players in combat without running undue risk of ruining their first experience with the game. In general, we're going to aim to run encounters as close to the minimum threshold as we can, while still trying to make for interesting combat.
So now, with all of that in mind, let's build a generalized scheme for the combat encounters the party will face.
Act 1: Introduction
Let's introduce the players to the game with an easy encounter for 100xp.
Once they have a taste of the game, throw in a hard one for 300 to flesh out this portion of the day.
SHORT REST
Act 2: Rising Action
Now let's just do 2 medium encounters on the way to the story climax. Each is worth 200xp.
SHORT REST
Act 3: Climax
Finally, we have the climax, show the players what a real fight looks like with a deadly encounter. That's our full 400xp budget for the third act.
LONG REST
Alright, now that we have a skeleton, let's flesh it out with some details. What is the quest the players are on? The most standard quest type is caravan guards, because it's easy to control what the players will experience. All you have to do is put the threats on the road in front of the players. The only way this adventure can get screwed up is if the players are completely anarchic and wander off into the wilderness.
Now, we want this adventure to lead into further adventures, so there needs to be something important in this session that will carry the story forwards. Let's say the players are tasked with guarding a caravan that is carrying a dragon egg. Now, that seems a little boring to me, so I'm going to add a twist. The players don't know about the egg; instead, they are told it is a trade caravan hauling gold bars to the neighboring duchy that is ruled by a black dragon, as a gift of peace to try and establish a military treaty. In fact, let's make the local gold dragon's land a marcheon, meaning Shoth the Stubborn is a Marquess. She isn't that important, so let's say she's also not especially old, she's just a young gold dragon. Meanwhile, the duchy is huge, its ruler, the black dragon, is a duke, powerful among his own kind, and therefore likely an ancient black dragon. Let's give him a random name too. He is now Rakoss of the North. Back to the adventure at hand, let's say Shoth is actually handing over one of her children as the peace gift. The gold bars are actually payment for the adventurers on safe arrival!
Now we need an antagonist. I kinda like the idea of Rakoss of the North being the main villain of the campaign, but he's way too powerful for the party right now, so let's make a lesser villain for them to deal with in just this adventure. Let's say... a traitor to Marquess Shoth has sold knowledge of the dragon egg to a band of black market smugglers. They want to steal the dragon egg to sell it for dark magic purposes.
Now, the first encounter is just an introduction to the game in general, so let's have the players fight something simple. Two 1/8 and one 1/4 CR enemies make for 100xp exactly. Looking up monsters, I see a wolf is 50xp. Scratch the original plan, let's go with two starving wolves, separated from their pack. With the multiplier, that's a 150xp threat, still within the easy threshold, so we're golden. They attack whichever hero is in the rear. (At this point, I'd like to make a note for later that we need to remind ourselves to ask for the party's marching order when they set out.) This sets a simple battlefield, with an open field, and the cart acting as a minor obstacle in the middle of the road.
The second encounter is much tougher. It's also tougher than the two that will follow it. Let's say this is where the heroes have their first run-in with the enemey. A spy is 200xp and a bandit is 25. This allows us to make an encounter of 300xp using 1 spy and 4 bandits. Wait a minute, though! The adjusted xp for that is 600! That's well beyond a deadly encounter for our fledgelings! Let's drop that down to just 1 spy and 1 bandit. We will also add 1 dummy bandit to the fight, because I just thought of a plan. A, dummy, enemy is one who takes damage but doesn't deal it. Instead, he leaps on to the cart and starts digging through it, ignoring any incoming damage. If he dies, one of the other two replaces him. For tactics, and to draw players into the adventure, we can start the encounter with the villains toppling a tree on the cart carrying the gold and the dragon egg. Then they attack. When the players defeat the last enemy, we then narrate that he narrowly escapes the blow, leaps on to the cart, pulls out a large golden egg, and runs off into the woods! For the battlefield layout, we want woodland running along one side of the road, the cart acting as an obstacle on the road, and a line of rough terrain representing the trunk of the tree that fell across the cart.
Alright, so now we're 75xp short of our adventuring day budget for the first act. That's fine, we'll just add a little to what we've already made. You can string multiple encounters together in a rapid-fire chain to seem like one long encounter, but without increasing the difficulty, because the enemies are broken up into smaller, more manageable groups. We'll just have the party get assaulted by 3 bandits (75xp and a threat of easy) immediately after the tree falls. When the last of them falls, the spy, his assistant bandit, and the dummy bandit arrive on the scene to steal the egg!
Here, we give the players the OPTION of a short rest. Give them some basic stuff they can do during the rest; tending to the wounded commoners on the cart, chasing down the horses that ran away, searching for a trail left by the bandit, shoving the tree off the cart, doing repairs to the cart, etc. Tell them this stuff will take an hour, or they can chase after him right away and forego the rest. To make sure the players don't just try to deliver the gold without the egg, have one of the commoner NPCs be aware of the true purpose of the mission. If the players try to push on to Rakoss Duchy, he spills the beans to them, and begs them to rescue that egg.
We are now in the second act of the story. We have 2 medium encounters of 200xp each.
Let's have the first one be an incidental encounter. Just some random stuff that interrupts them on the way. Two goblins make 100xp, and if we give each of them a boar for a mount, that's another 100. Oop! We went overboard again, let's drop the boars and go with something a little more benign- a mastiff, perhaps? Yeah, that's an adjusted threat xp of 250, right smack in the middle of a medium encounter. Let's call these two and their pet a hunting party. They aren't looking for humanoids, but they're happy to add the players to today's menu! Let's have this happen in the thick of the underbrush, so everything counts as rough terrain and everyone has half cover at all times unless adjacent to a target.
That leaves a spare 75xp to account for from our first encounter.
After tangling with those thugs, the players now happen upon the enemy's secret hide-out. They're holed up in some ruined old elven tower. They have guards posted, and they're waiting in ambush. They have 2 guards acting as bait standing at the entrance. Each of them has a mastiff. Hiding on top of the crumbled walls are 4 bandits equipped with longbows, waiting to pepper the adventurers when they approach the structure. To make it a bit tougher on the players at entry, but easier during the fight, this structure should be in an open clearing. There should be ladders to the top of the walls, allowing melee parties to take care of the archers. Now here's the problem with this encounter: it is, again, way over-threat. No problem, all of the combattants are of equal xp value. If we split the encounter in half, with the guards and dogs fighting first, and the archers descending on the party second, we wind up with two chained medium encounters that make our intended threat and budget exactly!
OK, so what are we going to do with that 75xp? We could run another combat encounter, but I'm not sure that makes much sense, given the stiff opposition they've already faced. Instead, I'm going to set that aside as an xp reward for overcoming an exploration challenge at the ruin site after the fight. We'll set that up when I go back over this to set up the exploration pillar.
Upon dealing with this ambush/siege, the players are most likely going to be in rough shape, so it's time for their second short rest opportunity. It takes them about an hour to search the criminals to find a key to the door into the underground portion of the ruin; or they can break down the doors right now and press on if they want.
Alright, now it's time for the big finale. The basement is a simple dungeon with a few decorative rooms. We'll use those for exploration later. In the main chamber however, the players find the leader of the criminal gang! The enemy is another spy, but this one is named. Let's call him Durgo. To make him special, let's apply the criminal background to his statblock, and let's also give him the dragonborn racial template from the DMG. Let's say dragonborn hold high stations in Dracomin, and constitute most of the mortal-blooded nobility. His partner in crime is a generic thug. In addition, we have 2 bandits and 2 cultists, for a full enemy group of 6 NPCs! I bet you already know what's about to happen, that's way over budget again! Indeed you are right! It's a threat of 800xp- that's double the deadly threshold. For first level characters, that's about the maximum limit for deadly encounters, so this is way beyond their means. Let's think about the space they're fighting in a bit and see if we can come up with a way to balance it out.
To make this battle interesting, lets have the room long, thin, and tall, with a 30ft ceiling. The entry area is at ground level, but the room rises 10ft to a middle platform with stairs on either side of the room, and then rises another 10ft to a final platform at the far end, with a staircase in the middle of the room. Durgo is standing at the top platform, and is placing the dragon egg in a large brass brazier. His thug assistant is blocking the staircase to the third platform. The two cultists kitty-corner flank him on the second platform, and the two bandits are on the ground floor, waiting beside the door to ambush the players with nets as soon as they enter the room.
OK, so with that layout, we can put the two bandits and two cultists together as an initial ambush medium encounter. Then, after they fall, Durgo and his bruiser descend upon the party as a 450xp threat deadly encounter. That's still a little overwhelming, but we can't break it down any more than that. We can, however, reduce the actual danger the enemy represents to be more appropriate. There's two ways to do this: nerfing the enemy statblock, or adding a premature win condition. Premature win conditions are ALWAYS more interesting than nerfed enemies, because they allow for combat to be about something other than just smashing everyone's faces into mush.
So, let's talk motivations for a moment. Durgo is just a mercenary. He's in it for the money. He doesn't like fighting, killing, or dying. It costs too much. He has given his men underground orders to capture the party; they are doing subdual damage, and prefer to grapple and restrain the players with rope, rather than kill them. That means you as a DM should do everything in your power, using the NPCs in these two chained encounters, to get the party tied up. If Durgo wins, he captures the players as his prisoners, and tries to employ them to replace the men they killed. Now, if Durgo starts losing, say either himself or his sidekick reach half health, he just surrenders. That means the players only nead to deal 1/4 of the damage necessary to defeat them in order to win. If the players capture him instead of killing him, he still tries to persuade them to let him go and join his band. He promises wealth beyond their imaginations. This gives us several possible endings to the adventure:
1. The players savagely kill Durgo and claim the egg. They return to the caravan and proceed to Duke Rakoss' duchy.
2. The players capture Durgo and reject his offer. They take their prisoners and the egg with them to Duke Rakoss' duchy.
3. The players accept Durgo's offer, whether they won or lost. Whoever is prisoner is freed. The players now become Durgo's bodyguards as they wait for the buyers of the dragon egg.
4. The players are defeated and refuse to join Durgo. They are imprisoned in one of the cosmetic rooms, to be sold as slaves.
Think a little bit about what kind of adventure might follow after each of these resolutions, but don't plan them out in detail. Just have a quick brainstorm of each, so that you can prepare for the next session when it comes to it. The best way to keep notes of your brainstorms for potential future adventures is to doodle out a quick mind map.
Now, let's go back and put the finishing touches on this adventure. We have thoroughly covered the combat pillar of adventure, now we need to add in the exploration and roleplay elements. We also need to put together the monetary reward for this adventure.
From the top, let's create the roleplay encounter that sets this adventure in motion.
To begin, we now know that we want to give our players some character creation guidelines in the form of a couple of simple rules:
1. Your character must be an adventurer.
2. Your character must actually want to do this job for the local Marquess.
3. Your character must be able to work with a group.
Those are some pretty fair guidelines to prevent the party from being incompatible with each other or the general idea of adventuring. Surprisingly, many players initially try to make a "cool" character without considering whether that character makes any sense in the situation they're about to participate in. Lone wolves, secretly evil jerks, and other edge-lord type characters are common. Don't stomp on their dreams of being an anti-hero, just remind them that they still need to be a hero when push comes to shove. (Unless you want to run an evil campaign. Then remind them they still need to be a horrid disgrace at the end of the day.)
Alright, so the player characters are all going to be starting out in the capital city of the Marcheon of Shoth. A marcheon is a type of border region, typically underprotected by the military and frequently the subject of petty battles over minor territorial disputes. It is a rough-and-tumble frontier region, dangerous, and ripe for adventure. As a recommendation, never start your players in a perfectly peaceful, well civilized, comfortable, safe location. They will have nothing to do and they will be bored. An adventure can most accurately be described as nothing more than a series of bad things happening to people who just want to get something done. The exciting part is when the protagonists overcome the bad stuff and succeed in the end anyways!
For simplicity, let's call the city Shothskeep. And, for further simplicity, let's say Shothskeep is pretty much just a keep surrounded by farmland. I kind of like the idea that Shoth's land as affected by the regional effects of her gold dragon lair, so let's upgrade her age to adult. We'll say she's a new inclusion to the monarchial tier of government. (New in the sense that dragons think of things. To humans she's been around for ages.) So, for example, the dragon can communicate telepathically with anyone who sleeps within 6 miles of the keep. Beautiful opalescent mists hang in the swampy valley of the march. Gemstones are supernaturally sparkly in her lands. In general, this is just a really nice place to live, despite the danger of the surrounding regions.
Despite it being idyllic, this place is still a frontier town, and the settlement within the keep's walls is predominantly a giant work camp dedicated to collecting resources for the kingdom and sustaining the keep and garrison itself. I like the idea of Shoth March being a swampy valley between some mountains, so we'll call it that. It's a mixture of an agricultural and mining area, and they predominantly mine coal for steel smelting from the nearby mountains. The coal is collected at the keep and shipped to the rest of the kingdom from there, but the mining camps are several days walk from Shothskeep. So, overall, let's say this place is doing well and is moderately wealthy. The coal for steel smelting is an important idea now that I think about it. Duke Rakoss has good reason to desire control over these lands to supply his armies with high quality steel equipment. And Marquess Shoth has good reason to seek a peace agreement to prevent him from just invading her lands via a civil dispute- a common thing in primitive and violent societies, as fantasy worlds often are.
Let's start the adventurers off in the keep proper, waiting in a lobby room to greet the Lady of the land. This gives them an opportunity to introduce their characters to each other proper, and get used to the idea of roleplaying amongst themselves. Once, like, a couple of minutes of that has passed, we'll have the players brought before the great drakaina, a huge creature 15ft long sitting atop a mound of gold and other treasures on a dais in the central hall of the keep. She explains that they are to guard a gift to the neighboring Duchy of Rakoss, and why peace with that land is important to the future of March Shoth. She intentionally decieves the players about the egg. Give the players a chance to catch this insincerity. Have her roll a deception check against the players' passive insight scores. If any of the players' passive scores beat her check, tell those players that they get the impression she isn't telling the whole truth. She refuses to divulge any further details however, even if pressed, and instead orders them to be on their way by noon, calling in the next order of business.
Next, the players should have an opportunity to go shopping. Let's say they can buy anything in the PHB of a value up to 50gp, and that they buy and sell gear at base value while working in the employ of the local lady. This makes shopping faster, because the players don't have to roleplay haggling of prices at the store. This is the first session, the players already wasted the first hour or so on character creation, they need to get going! Now, with more experienced players, it isn't necessary to give them a shopping trip right out the gate; they're used to dealing with constraints. But for a new bunch of players, you want to help them get something close to their character vision as soon as possible, and a simple shopping trip can take them very close.
Now the players join the wagon carrying the gold. It is intentionally disguised to look like a standard coal shipment. There is a war horse available for each player, but they are dressed up as generic riding horses; no armor or regalia.
Let's say the players travel for two days before the combat part of the adventure begins. Make sure you deduct the food and water for that time. To be kind to the new players who might not be used to logistics planning, let's have the two wagon drivers have extra supplies that they'll share with the adventurers for 1sp per day.
Now we have the wolf attack.
Two hours down the road, we have the falling tree ambush and the egg gets stolen.
An hour rest, or the party gives immediate chase if they're really aggressive or were sparing with their resources. They might get the mission details from the NPC if they try to press on with the gold.
Now they stumble into a pair of hunting goblins and their pet dog. Let's say both parties are surprised at the start of this encounter and let's give an optional roleplay solution. In the first round, have the two goblins loudly exclaim their surprise in goblin, then banter between themselves if they should try to take these guys down. With a DC10 persuasion check or a DC8 intimidation check, they can be convinced not to attack- but only if someone in the party can speak goblin. If they decide not to attack, they can be asked about the man who ran by, and they will direct you to the bandit hideout in the old elven ruin. If the players offer to pay the goblins, they will assist in that fight and demand payment up-front, but will not follow the party into the ruins. If they survive the fight after helping the heroes, they wait outside the ruins to ambush the players anyways. They are goblins after all! The players earn xp from this encounter when the goblins die, whether during the initial encounter, during their assistance with the tower, or in the follow up encounter afterward.
Aside from the potential assistance of two goblins and their dog, the attack on the camp runs the same as usual.
Now let's add that 75xp we lost back into our budget for the second act. We're going to trap the entrance door. Now, if you'll look in the DMG on page 121, we'll see that a minor setback trap will have an attack modifier of +3 to +5 and will deal 1d10 damage during tier 1, (levels 1 through 4).We want this to be a pretty minor thing, so let's give it the minimum +3 to hit. What kind of a trap shall it be? Let's make it a 10ft wide and 10ft deep pit right in front of the door. If people try to open the door without disarming it, the floor gives way, dropping everyone in front of it 10ft. This means it will deal 1d6 falling damage to its victims, rather than the recommended 1d10. Let's make it rather tough to notice. DC14 perception, passive or check, will reveal that the floor tile in front of the door does not quite match the surrounding ruins. Disarming the trap requires a DC16 sleight of hand check to defuse the trigger in the door's hinges, or a DC10 athletics check to just set it off while supporting yourself so you don't fall in. Disarming the trap or surviving it awards the party 75xp.
Alright, so now the party's inside the lesser dungeon. I imagine it being a simple 10ft wide hallway, 60ft long, with two side rooms. One room is only 15ft×15ft and contains stacks of crates and obviously stolen goods. The other room is 50ft long and 30ft wide, with both sides lined with a total of 10, 10ft jail cells with a 10ft central passage leading to a short table and chair on the far wall. This is the room Durgo imprisons them in if he wins.
Let's add a small 15×10ft room adjacent to the third platform of the last room in the dungeon. It is behind a DC17 locked door, but Durgo has the key hidden on his body. (Have him roll a sleight of hand check to determine the DC for someone to find it using investigation, even if he's already dead.) Inside this room is a treasure hoard belonging to the bandits, and it is based on Durgo's DC of 1, which makes it a challenge 0 to 4 hoard. Randomly roll this treasure hoard so it comes across as a scraggly mishmash of accumulated wealth. This is the players' actual reward for the adventure if they defeat the bandits. If they joined the bandits or were captured, their reward will have to await your creativity in their next session! Meanwhile, that pile of gold bricks for Rakoss? Yeah. He's evil. He plans to take the egg, and the players' payment, and imprison the heroes when they arrive. He is the real villain of this story. But they won't find that out until next time, and only if they managed to rescue the egg!
Now you do some organizational prep, so you have your pencils, paper, dice, and notebook ready to play. Before the first session, send the players a list of available races, classes, and backgrounds, along with a sentence of description for each. Describe what these things represent, not their mechanical effects. Tell the players to choose 1 option of each type so they're ready to make a character at the start of the first session. Have your players tell you what their choices are before the session begins if they can. Print off the standard character sheets from Wizards of the Coast for each player. To do chargen within 1 hour, follow this process:
1. Have everyone generate statistics. The fastest choice is to give them the standard array. It is important to note that the standard array is also the most optimal application of the point-buy method. Spend some time explaining what the abilities mean, then explain that the scores turn into modifiers that are actually applied to dice rolls in the game.
2. Ask everyone for their race choice. Going around the table, tell each player their ability score modifiers and racial traits. Have the players write these traits down. Also give the players some more info about the aesthetic aspects of their race, like height and age range, and ask them to think about what their character looks like.
3. Ask everyone for their background choice. Give them their proficiencies and have the players take the starting gear. (buying gear takes too long and is not well balanced) Give each player their roleplaying feature.
4. Finally, ask everyone for their class choice. Tell each player their hit die. Explain that hit dice are used to generate hit points at level up, and that they are spent during rests to recover lost hit points. Generate their starting hit points now. Give them their class proficiencies. Have them choose their starting gear. Do not waste time with encumbrance rules at all. Calculate AC. Tell everyone their proficiency modifier is +2. Now the hardest part: Give each player their class features. Start with non-spellcasters, because they are fast and simple and don't need to read the book themselves. After explaining how each spellcaster works, give them the PHB to choose spells known/prepared. This last part, choosing spells, is the only part that might take longer than an hour, depending on how meticulous/indecisive the players are. Memorize the spells with misleading names, and help the spellcasters through their selection.
5. The last step is to talk to the players a bit about who they want their characters to be, what kind of lives they've lived, and where their characters want to go with their future endeavors.
Run your session and take notes on everything the players do. Keep your players' character sheets so that you can reference what they're able to do when planning future sessions. When you start planning the next session, remember that they are now all level 2 for surviving in the first place, and plan your budget accordingly. Review your brainstorm notes for ALL of the possible endings, even the ones that didn't happen, as well as your notes on what actually happened at the table. Brainstorm a new adventure and get writing! Plan encounters that are tailored to the specific capabilities of your characters, to let them shine, or to force them to rely on each other.
Onward and upward, my fledgeling Dungeon Masters! Spread your wings and fly!
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